Band Interview: Young Adventurers

We caught up with Exeter’s excellent Young Adventurers ahead of the release of their EP ‘Short Sighted’, out on cassette tape via Circle House Records on Friday 21st October…

What can we expect from the new EP? How does it differ from the ‘Dentures Demo’?

Catherine: I think it’s much more melodic and a bit more sure of who we are and what we sound like.

Kay: We spent a lot more time writing and re-working the newer stuff and completely lucked-out having our friend Paul Yeadon record it, he made it into something we’re really proud of.

Morgan: We’re all more confident in what we’re doing than we were when we recorded the Dentures Demo and we’ve spent a lot more time on the songs making sure we’re completely happy with them. When we recorded last time we were finishing up the songs as we recorded them!

Are there any artists that you’d say played a big part in shaping the sound of the EP?

Catherine: I listened to a lot of Shit Present and Lemuria

Kay: It took a while to work out that it’s better and more fun to play simpler drum parts than over-complicating things. The Courtneys and Tacocat do that really well so I try to channel them.

Morgan: I’ve been really trying to be better at bass, haha!! Trying to make what I play less boring with little doodley bits in it. I think that listening to super cool bands like Camp Cope and Cayetana are pretty good inspiration.

Describe your sound in three words (you each get one word).

Kay: Hyper

Catherine: Pop

Morgan: ROCKKKK!!!!

You’re all in different bands (Latchstring, Magpie, Big Words), as well as this one, how do you know if a song that you write is a Young Adventurers song?

Catherine: I find writing songs for Young Adventurers tends to be mostly melodic, but also a bit dissonant. It will also have a superficially uninteresting subject matter but be something all 3 of us can relate to.

Morgan: Catherine’s an absolute shredder, so she writes the songs. Me and Kay then just figure out our parts and a song is born!

Kay: Until I started playing in Magpie I had no idea I was capable of playing drums in different ways. Similarly since playing in Latchstring, Catherine has become a much more confident guitarist and the stuff she is writing is so good. I think playing with other people has been really good for Young Adventurers!

What’s the story behind the glasses / ‘Short Sighted’ theme?

Kay: I’m not sure where it came from exactly but probably about a year ago, before we’d even finished all the songs, we knew it would be called Short Sighted and had come up with the entire concept for the artwork. Morgan’s mum Di collected all the glasses for us and we spent an afternoon photographing them hanging precariously from my bedroom light.

Catherine: Kay is a master designer and Morgan is really great at thinking creatively. They suggested the name and the art and being an advocate for spectacles/all kinds of perception myself, I thought it was a great idea and thus, the EP was named.

Morgan: basically, we had a weird thing for a while of looking at google images of teeth and toes and other things that make most normal people feel squeamish. That’s why we called it the Dentures Demo. The natural progression was eyes and glasses. We decided that Short Sighted was a pretty cool name for the EP.

What’s your favourite song off of the new EP and why? (You’ve all got to decide individually!)

Kay: My favourite song to play is one we haven’t actually recorded yet, but we start every practice with it and it immediately makes me immensely happy. On Short Sighted I’m really into the first track, Next Week, which until we recorded was called ‘New Banger’ which pretty accurately sums it up!

Catherine: I really enjoy Pet Holiday and Next Week because they’re fun to play and I love to wail

Morgan: She’s So Nice. I have so much fun playing it!

What’s the best thing about being in Young Adventurers?

Catherine: 100% the best part is spending time with my friends. Also high up on the list: having tinnies at practice, playing really loud so people in the bar over the road can hear us, talking of ridiculous covers we could do, watching RuPaul after practice. Playing gigs with other great bands and being able to contribute to a music scene is fun too.

Kay: Playing music with Catherine and Morgan is one of my favourite things to do, but I also really enjoy the friendship that has grown from being in the band. We hang out a lot doing stupid shit together and it’s just so fun being thirty and regularly having sleepovers with my best mates.

Morgan: Definitely having a reason to mess around with the other guys. Honestly, being in a band is the most fun and we’ve become such good friends because of it. Whenever we manage to get together to practice we go in there with the weight of whatever life stuff is getting on top of us at the time. After four hours of playing music and eating snacks and catching up and drinking shandy (we bloody love shandy) we all feel so much lighter and more like human beings again. Young Adventurers is our therapy!!